Rivers And Rise Of Medieval European Cities

River is origin of human civilization. River provide human needs with necessary for water, offensive advantage and convenient transportation. At ancient Greece and Rome time, the siting of towns were influenced by strategy and political factors. Most of towns located in the middle of the imperial, along the Roman Roads and navigable steams rather than high points. At the middle age, the development of European cities got into the second peak. No mater the number and scale of cities had bigger progress than before. The commercial development is the major impetus to the rise of medieval cities. In order to facilitate business and the transportation of goods, the convenient traffic conditions are particularly important for the development of the cities. Because in the middle age of Europe, waterways has more advantage than road transport, therefore rivers became primary factor for the siting of Medieval cities.The interior cities which located in mainland Europe were much more rely on the rivers. Most of the very large cities located in riverfront, the confluence sites and estuaries of rivers. And some special positions of river, such as bridge-point sites, river-meander sites and river-ford sites are superior positions of city siting.The influence of rivers to city siting as the center, to investigate the effect of rivers to rise and decline of medieval cities at the same time. From the basic statistics of medieval very large cities, classified and summarized the cities by the relative position between river, obtained the intuitive data. The date confirms the rivers are the key role to medieval cities development.